Role of the Replicant in "Blade Runner" Powerpoint Presentation

Hybrid Art Interpretation Assignment:

                        My hybrid art comes from the artist known as Tom Phillips and he created an art piece that includes both text and images that relate to one another in just one art piece. He is known for writing “The Humument” which is a novel that uses the ‘cut and paste method’ of making an exquisite hybrid art piece. The art that I will be analyzing represents the idea of what a man truly is and how he relates himself to the outside world. Thus, the art pieces name is “A Human Document” since it documents a man’s life. First I am going to jump into what the text means within the image.

                        The first words that are seen at the top of the art piece is ‘a human document was written’ and these words centralize the main theme throughout the whole art piece, by stating that this piece will be representing human life. As the viewer looks at the whole piece, there are a lot of phrases upon the image and these words represent what the image is trying to present to the audience. The most interesting phrase that pops out, at least to me, is when the image states, “The Journal of secret scribing and hiding”. This phrase clearly shows how humans are very secretive and like to keep their guards up because it’s easier to let people look at you from a distance, rather than letting them get to know the personal or emotional side of who a person truly is. The idea of being kept hidden is repeated throughout the rest of the bottom half of the image, but the words describe that this journal idea or hiding one’s secrets doesn’t tell the whole story of where one comes from or why people tend to hide things from other. The order of the words implies a certain meaning by stating, “Journal contents, as yet is only half of the story, the first scenes and feelings”. These words are meant to perplex the viewer into the art piece and makes them wonder why when people hide from others, in this case by keeping a journal of their most inner moments, that only half of a person’s story is told because even if we hide our most inner thoughts or emotions, we as people still can know another person fully without knowing all of their hidden traits. Nonetheless, the bottom half of the text relates to the viewers on a personal level, as well as the phrases relating to one another. However, the top half of the image and phrases represent a different meaning when it comes to describing how humans portray themselves in the world and captures the struggle that people must go through in order to live their lives.

                        The most striking phrase that is at the top of this art piece states, “In that very narrative passage, he sat dejected”. This phrase depicts how people are not fully confident in themselves and are constantly judging who they are, as well as other people. The phrase uses the image of a novel to represent this ideology, since in books people are constantly judged and shows that the human race is very hypocritical of themselves, even to the extent of feeling dejected and this makes them feel like they are outcasts or isolated from society. However, the image seems to depict that people are alone in the world, by having the human-like figure sinking into a black abyss of isolation, since some people can’t feel like they are a part of society or that they can’t live up to the expectations that society has for individuals, which in turn makes these people feel like failures and that they can’t possibly integrate into the ideal that society portrays to the world. However, the opposite meaning could be found within this image but in my mind, it seems that the image is trying to represent how humankind puts too much pressure on themselves to be the perfect ideal in society even though this can never be achieved since everyone makes mistakes in their lives.

                        Lastly, the image depicts people as representing the actual text that is described within the image by stating, “Pieces of writing of the writings of the names”. This clearly depicts how even though individuals see themselves as failures in parts of their lives, they still manage to make sure that they contribute to society, regardless of what they think of themselves. Overall, the image depicts how humans view themselves in society, but not all individuals have this take on how they represent themselves in the world. The image though does make the viewer think critically about how we portray ourselves to our society and gives one point of view on how people interpret themselves into the collective world that we all live in.

Fun Sites with Informative Articles :)

Fun Sites:

1. Neopets= http://www.neopets.com/

A. Articles:

* The Links might not work but type the titles into the site that Mark gave to us to find articles in the email and should come up with these sites. Please email me Mark before friday if you can't find these links.

-Web Sites for Young Children: Gateway to Online Social Networking?:
http://rpucolo.colorado.edu/ebsco-web/ehost/detail?vid=1&hid=8&sid=2246445d-b0fa-4589- 8b1a-f03ca1000ac4%40sessionmgr14&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d% 3d#db=aph&AN=45383698

-Technology's Whiz Kids.:
http://rpucolo.colorado.edu/ebsco-web/ehost/detail?vid=1&hid=8&sid=25fb1335-87ed-4a0b- a8d5-7be082f5e251%40sessionmgr11&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d% 3d#db=aph&AN=35151762

2. SpinChat= http://www.spinchat.com/

A. Articles:

-Interpersonal Perception in Internet Chat Rooms:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=MImg&_imagekey=B6WM0-45FCNRJ-3-1 &_cdi=6920&_user=918210&_pii=S0092656602923408&_origin=search&_coverDate=04% 2F30%2F2002&_sk=999639997&view=c&wchp=dGLzVzz-zSkWb&md5 =c4529d69ba7fc6899b51c98e34659353&ie=/sdarticle.pdf

3. Kaneva= http://www.kaneva.com/

A. Articles

* For this one click on the pdf button on top of page in order to reach the full article

-Virtual Worlds as a Medium for Advertising:
http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1320000/1314244/p45-barnes.pdf?key1=1314244&key2= 8121307821&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=108642047&CFTOKEN=62140317

Have fun! :)

Avatar Compare/Contrast Assignment

                    Avatars can be all sorts of different images that can represent us as we scroll the pages of the internet. My avatar that I created resembles me as how "I" perceive myself as an anime character. This idea of creating a certain image of ourselves online, that doesn't necessarily represent us in real life, relates to David Bell's concept that identity can be endless when on the internet. This occurs because people feel free to express themselves however they want to online, where they couldn't possible represent themselves in real life as when on the net. It is an imaginary world that can be molded by the user and can become addicting since can live in a sphere that represents more of who you are. Basically, Bell's theory stresses that identity can be endless on the internet and can let people experiment with other identities that they couldn't have represented in their life to life moments.

                   However, as I was looking through different avatars, the avatar doesn't have to exactly have characteristics of a real person. The other examples of avatars that I found were just smiley faces that were dressed to impress. This was interesting to me since I always thought of avatars as kind of looking like we do, but different in contrast. This was certainly not the case and has made me more interested in making more avatars. But, the smiley face avatars seem to lose some depth when creating an avatar that could represent you. I would rather have an avatar that looks more like me than an abstract image of me which is what these smiley avatars represent, at least to me. Overall, this was a fun project and now I actually want to explore the world of avatars and the different ones you can make.

My Created Avatar

Created at: http://www.manga.com/content/avatar-face-maker

Experctations and Uncertainties About Engl 3116

I haven't ever really taken a Digital Media/ Advance Theory class but I was interested when I added the class to my schedule. When I signed up for the course, I didn't know that we would mostly be dealing with articles on the internet and what digitial media actually means. I actually like learning about these concepts and ideologies a lot and would like to learn more about the digital media age. My expectations for this class would be that we would discuss these theories in detail and explore aspects of the digital world. I would like this to be done through images and the various articles that can be supplied through you as our teacher.

However, I am a little uncertain about some of the topics that have been going on in the readings. The readings are sometimes easy to read, but at other times I have no idea what they are talking about. For example, in Norris's article I was very confused by all the theories he was trying to throw at his readers. It was a very bulky text and I would sometimes understand what he was discussing, but at other times I absolutley had no idea. It especially was confusing when he talked about quantum mechanics since there was a lot of different views and it seemed to be a jumble mess to me. Basically, I am a little worried that the readings might go over my head, but I believe that if we discuss these topics in class, I should be able to understand them better.

Overall, I am excited to learn about the digital world and how it affects all of us in our daily lives. I really think, well especially for me, that we sometimes forget how important the interent is since it keeps all of us connected to the world. If we didn't have internet, I don't think I would know what to do half of the time or know what is going on in the world. So I believe that the digital age is helpful to our society and has made us a more diversw, as well as complex society as a whole and has bettered our general community.